Steve Jobs in mouse ears?

There's a ton of speculation swirling that Disney is set to announce a buyout of Pixar Animation Studios for somewhere in the range of US$7 Billion. The acquisition would make Steve Jobs the largest individual shareholder of Disney according to a story on AppleXNet.

The buyout very much parallels Apple's purchase of NeXT ten years ago. Because so much of NeXT's advanced technology essentially displaced Apple's own struggling and dated codebase for the Mac OS to become Mac OS X, and Steve Jobs' own idea of a trimmed and stylish product line replaced the beige box Power Mac (insert four-digit number here), many industry analysts joked that 'NeXT had bought Apple for negative $400 million.'

According to a Reuters story published on ZDNet newsit is not clear whether the board meeting will be held on Sunday or Monday or whether board members were prepared to vote on a proposed merger of Pixar with Disney.

According to Hoovers Disney owns the ABC television network, 10 broadcast TV stations, and more than 70 radio stations. It also has stakes in several cable channels such as ESPN (80%) and A&E Television Networks (37%).

If the merger happens you can expect a whole lot of Disney content to become available for sale from the iTunes music store.